


guided tours of d'qar

by sighduck



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Flirting, Gen, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 19:58:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5553377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sighduck/pseuds/sighduck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe shows Finn where the youths go to make out. As one does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	guided tours of d'qar

 

  
Even with a limp, Finn is more of an asset than not: Force-sensitive, sharp shot, always eager to go the extra mile. Maybe a little too eager, actually.  
  
'I'm fine, really,' Finn insists, breathing hard. 'I can do another lap. I love laps. I sit in them, I run them, I love them.'  
  
Poe presses his laugh into the back of his teeth with his tongue. 'Oh, you sit in laps, huh?'  
  
'Uhh, sometimes, yea,' Finn says absently, wiping his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. When Poe glances back up at his face, he's peering at the sky. 'Whenever Rey lets me.' (Finn sits in Rey's lap? Finn _sits in Rey's lap?_ )  
  
Finn bites his lip, lowers his eyes to Poe's. 'Do we, um. Do we have to go in right now?' Jess always says that all Finn ever has to do is flutter his eyelashes and Poe'll get him whatever he wants, but that's not true because (1) Finn only ever flutters his eyelashes at Rey; and (2) Finn never really asks Poe for anything. Anyway - even if it were true, it wouldn't mean what Jess thinks it does.

Finn's just...someone worth taking care of, is all.    
  
Poe shakes his head free of all unnecessary thoughts, and smiles. 'No, 'course not, man. We can stay out for as long as you like.' He's confident they'll make it back to base before lights-out - Finn's almost clinically addicted to following dorm rules. It's something Poe looks forward to unteaching him.  
  
The old nursery -- already a little wild when Poe was a rookie, now a thriving, nigh on innavigable mass of vine, tree and bush -- blocks off a quiet little clearing. The clearing, Poe tells Finn, opens up quite directly to the sky, if he's interested in seeing it?  
  
'Oh, that'd be poison!, thanks,' says Finn. (Poison, Poe has learned, is Finnese for _very good_ or _great_.) He stares dubiously down the overgrown path slinking ahead and away from them. 'Er, you can walk up ahead...and then I guess I'll follow you.'  
  
'Oh, don't worry,' says Poe. 'There's room enough for two.' But not _very_ much, he soon remembers; that used to be the entire point. And Finn obviously still has his thing about kiyati, so he spends the entire walk pressed up tight against Poe's side, smelling of sweat and sweet and lemon-sop soap.  
  
'At ease, rookie,' Poe says, once they reach the clearing, the stars a wild tumble above them. He clears his throat, tries to smooth out his voice. 'Kiyati don't come out in open spaces.'  
  
Finn immediately straightens up and steps away. 'Kiyati, what? I'm, I'm not worried about the _kiyati_ ,' he says, laughing very loudly. 'However,' he adds, 'it is good to know that they stay away from open spaces. Just, as general...environmental knowledge.' He coughs into his fist, clasps his hands behind his back, and stares unblinkingly at the sky above. Poe presses his lips close together so as to not give away his smile.  
  
Sometimes it's very difficult to resist the urge to tease Finn. He's a very tease-able person. And it's not as though he can't take a joke. It's just that sometimes...he takes it too literally. It only took one stray comment from some landlocked idiot about Finn wearing his boyfriend's jacket everywhere for Finn to corner him and ask, very earnestly, if he'd like him to speak with the General to clear up what was clearly a basewide misunderstanding. 'It wouldn't be fair to anyone you _are_ interested in,' he said, and then he started babbling on about how, he would of course return the jacket straight away, or even, once he'd built up enough credit, buy Poe an entirely new jacket, if that's what he preferred, or even--  
  
'It's fine, Finn-- _Finn_.' (Remembering now, Poe realises that he almost definitely grabbed Finn by the shoulders.) 'Keep the kriffin' jacket. If people ask you why you wear it, tell 'em it's 'cus you saved my life; and tell 'em _I_ wanted everybody to know it.'  
  
Finn returned the jacket anyway.  
  
Poe lets the thoughts dissolve away, stares up and around. There, the moon, sky-bitten and small; there the Cleft Spear, the Dead Eye; there the bough of love, where he's carved his initials no fewer than five times. 'Wow...I haven't been here in ages,' he says, taking a wide turn around the clearing. 'I used to come here all the time.'  
  
'That makes sense,' says Finn. When Poe turns to look at him, he's finally relaxed his stance into something a bit more natural. 'Qamsi says all the rookies come here to get to know each other better. But you're already pretty friendly with everybody, so.'  
  
Poe pauses. He doesn't quite remember which rookie Qamsi is, but he's fairly certain there's at least a little wilful misdirection going on here. 'Er, that's not quite--' he stumbles to a halt. How to explain the misunderstanding without making it seem like he brought Finn here to gnash-up? 'People who come here...already know each other pretty well.' Well enough to want a healthy amount of privacy, at least.  
  
'Oh, yea?' Finn says, interest piqued. He stares wide around them. 'Are you not allowed in if you're strangers?'  
  
Ridiculously, Poe can feel his face getting a little hot. He huffs out a small laugh, amazed. 'Uh...well. N---o...not exactly, no.'  
  
Finn swivels around to stare at him head-on. 'Gosh, well, _anyway_ ,' says Poe quickly, ignoring Finn's growing smile, 'aren't stars great? I heard this poem once--'  
  
'Poe,' says Finn, cutting him off. That was a close one: Poe only knows a few poems by heart, and they're all terrible, and written by him. 'Do people come here to gnash-up?'  
  
'I--, y--, _do_ they?' Poe shrugs, raises his hands. 'You know, how can we ever really _know_...why anyone does anything, really?'  
  
It's hard to make out Finn's expression once he stops smiling; it's pretty clear from his tone that he's a little annoyed. 'Well, I know that you avoid talking about courting and marriage and stuff--' ...Courting? '--because you think I'm some traumatised little kid. And I'm not, Poe, ok? I know about reproduction, I know about kissing, I know they're not the same thing.'  
  
'Great,' Poe says, faintly. _Courting_. 'So you know that gnashing is a lot closer to... _reproduction_ than it is to kissing, right.'  
  
Finn scoffs loudly, which means he didn't know. 'Of course I do!' He clears his throat. 'Did. Of course I did.'  
  
'Because it would be fine if you didn't,' says Poe. 'I don't ever want to make you feel bad about asking questions, or just not knowing.'  
  
'Yea, Poe, I know that, I get that. And it's not that you ever make me feel bad, really, it's just--you either assume that I don't know about certain things that I _do_ know about, or...you don't say anything when I don't know enough, or if I don't know the, the _right_ thing.'  
  
'But for me to say something every single time I think you don't know enough--' he takes a few hesitant steps in Finn's direction '--I'd have to keep assuming that you don't know about certain things...when you will sometimes know a lot about them. I don't want to confuse you or mislead you or...make you feel like a little kid.' He shrugs a little, almost helplessly. 'And you're not a little kid. You've been figuring out a lot of this stuff without anybody's help. You've got really good instincts, Finn.' They saved his life, at least.  
  
Finn purses his lips thoughtfully; rubs his hands up his arms twice. Son of a Sith, Poe's got him out here after moon-up in his sweaty little shirt, he's probably freezing!

'Ok, well,' says Finn, after a few moments. 'How about this, then: if you think I might be missing something important? Don't get awkward or change the subject - just tell me, ok? And if I already know about it, I'll tell you. And if I don't - I'll ask other people about it, too, so I'm not just depending on you for all the...the translations.' Poe's already nodding before Finn finishes speaking.  
  
'Alright,' he says, letting out all the air in his lungs in one breath. He crosses the last few steps that separate them. 'Yea, we can do that, no problem. Do you wanna start, like, right now?'  
  
'Yea, sure, definitely,' says Finn. He makes a silly preening face. ' _Give me what you got,/try to get a good shot._ ' Poe deeply regrets ever showing Finn his dad's old holovids of The Sprukka Sieves. Now he's going to have _Hyperspeed Love_ stuck in his head all night.  
  
'Right, ok.' He huffs out a laugh, takes off his jacket and drapes it around Finn's shoulders. Finn jumps a little. 'So - a little context, then. Your friend Qamsi was either teasing you by not telling you what people come up here to do, or she--'  
  
'He,' says Finn.  
  
Poe suppresses an entirely inexplicable flare of annoyance. '--alright, he was either being not very nice by not telling you. _Or_.' He shrugs lightly. 'He was being _very_ nice, and was hoping to come here with you himself.'  
  
'Oh,' says Finn, blank. His stunned face soon shifts into a huge smile, one Poe can't help but mirror. 'Oh, _wow_. That's great! I mean, I'll obviously ask him what he meant, but that's really great, that's really helpful. I definitely would not have ever thought about any of that.' He ducks his head - then seems to remember he's wearing Poe's jacket all at once.

His smile fades; he glances up. He looks thoughtful, tentative. He looks like he's going to start talking about _basewide misunderstandings_ again. 'Listen, Poe...about your jacket...'  
  
'If you say you can't wear it because of what some idiot said once,' Poe swears, half-indignant, 'I will honestly leave you here for the kiyati to eat.'  
  
'--Wow, Poe. Such language. And here I thought we'd just had a breakthrough.' Finn shakes his head, pulls the jacket more tightly around himself. 'All I wanted to know was if wearing this here makes you my girlfriend.' Alright. It's officially time to leave. 'Wait, no, Poe, stop, come back! I was just kidding! Poe! Wait up!'

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Qamsi was neither teasing Finn nor hoping to make a move - he was just being euphemistic. #chillpoe


End file.
